Book printing in the early modern period

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Book printing in the early modern period. A historical case study on the implementation of new information and communication technologies is the title of a monograph by Michael Giesecke . The 957-page work is considered to be one of the most important German-language publications on book printing with movable type in recent decades and was published in 1991.

Giesecke completed his habilitation in 1989 in Bielefeld in linguistics and communication studies on the upheaval in media and communication history in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries; The monograph on book printing in the early modern period , published by Suhrkamp Verlag , emerged from the habilitation thesis , which "largely" corresponds to the habilitation thesis. In the preface, Giesecke states that he has worked on the subject for a total of 13 years - albeit with interruptions.

target

Giesecke sees his work as a desideratum : “What has been missing so far is a simple theoretical modeling of the phenomenon of 'book printing'” (p. 23). The aim of his "historical case study on the implementation of new information and communication technologies" is therefore to "describe the social community in a part of Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries as an information and communication system that was brought about by printing as a key technology" (P. 22).

He also sees his case study as a prototype for the “implementation of new information and communication technologies” , thus explicitly pointing out a possible transferability of his approach to the new technologies emerging today .

structure

After a short foreword , the volume is divided into seven main sections, including an introduction and a concluding section ; The main part is made up of the five central chapters, which together make up a good two thirds of the work.

  1. introduction
  2. "Van der boy printer art": A new information technology is introduced
  3. Spread and use of typographic information technology until Gutenberg's death (1468): The solution of old problems with new means and old legitimations
  4. From typography to typographic communication systems: the creative exploration of the possibilities of the new medium in the late 15th and early 16th centuries
  5. The typographic networking of social communication for the common benefit of the German nation (1520–1555): Dimensions of the new media and systems
  6. The typographic production of spirit and culture in the further course of the 16th century
  7. Conclusion: The limits of contemporary and the other limits of modern descriptions of typographic networks

The band includes extensive footnotes , a detailed literature and sources as well as a material Notes and finally two registers from (people and authors, tags). The 1998 paperback edition was also accompanied by an afterword in which Giesecke commented on the reception of the 1991 hardback edition.

The structure largely follows the chronological order and ranges from the era before Gutenberg through his work and work to the end of the 16th century.

approach

Due to the broad scope of Giesecke's approach, the presentation includes “aspects of communication, social, technical, literary, language, educational, cultural, civilization, and even religious and political history. The influence of the Reformation on the acceptance and spread of the medium of letterpress printing is examined (among other things!). the importance of the new medium for political, societal and social communication as well as the creation and shaping of 'public opinion'; technical requirements and developments; economic consequences; the consequences of printing for the recognition of certain human senses; the changes in the author's role and the science system; the importance of the printed book for individual and collective education and private reading. Printing processes from other cultures (China, South Korea) are also covered; the investigation includes both medieval manuscript culture and printing processes before Gutenberg; and the current information society is often reflected on anyway ” .

Giesecke regards the typography emerging in the 15th century as an information and communication system ; This is reflected on the one hand in the interpretation of the components of this typography as memory , software and code including the corresponding terminology; information is entered into the typographic memory , and the market is an economic system with inputs and outputs , the process of printing is a printing of different types of information .

On the other hand, the systemic influence is shown in numerous process and function diagrams borrowed from cybernetics . Systemic and cybernetic thinking pervades the entire argument, for example Giesecke recognizes that the award of a medium always means the devaluation of another - a completely normal cybernetic feedback process . Naturally found in this approach, all control and regulation sprozesse and feedback loops .

content

Part 1

The introduction shows book printing as a catalyst for cultural change and introduces its systemic communication and social model. In addition, Giesecke justifies the need to differentiate between the scriptographic and the typographic media revolution , discusses theoretical and media-political perspectives and closes with the announcement that he wants to interpret “social and communication systems as technological systems” .

Giesecke's interpretation of letterpress as a catalyst takes on from Elizabeth Eisenstein's investigations into the printing press; There she speaks of an agent of change who intervenes in all other media systems, in the structures of society and in the artist's perception.

Section 2

The second section (pp. 63–207) begins with an inventory of the situation in the Gutenberg period, discusses the forerunners of the Gutenberg technique and introduces some technical innovations such as the hand-casting instrument and lead letters . In addition, Giesecke temporarily expanded the focus of his considerations from Central Europe to East Asia and suggests that there was already a print with individual, movable wooden letters in China around 1314, and that even the use of metal letters in the sand casting process from South Korea from 1495 onwards be. The technology was known there, but the difference to Central Europe is that it has not established itself socially; By this he means, for example, the lack of a public book market and book trade, ie a publicly accessible "information store" as it has developed in Central Europe.

Furthermore, Giesecke in an excursion to the printing technique ( storing , line set and page set , line balance and break , etc.) indicate that the letterpress a complex network of technological aids such as paper , letter case , angles hooks , printing press , etc., but also a social differentiation of Work processes in authors , publishers , typesetters , inking and proofreading etc.

Giesecke's thesis is surprising, but well-founded, that Gutenberg's intention was not mechanical reproduction, but rather the development of a “calligraphic typewriter without a pen, stylus and nib” (p. 134). According to this, Gutenberg strived for the "ideal of an" artificial "(in the sense of artistic) proportioning of the text design , analogous to the ideal of beauty of the Renaissance ( wonderful harmony ) . Through the multiple identical reproduction of the lead letters with the help of molds (matrices) and by the production of the molds with the help of stamps (punches) he succeeded in standardizing the typeface and, together with the mobility of the letters on the line, the set of a uniform and harmoniously proportioned Pleading.

Section 3

In the third section (pp. 209–328) Giesecke examines “which communication systems and which types of information were redesigned with the help of typographical technology before Gutenberg's death, and what consequences this use of information technology had for people” (p. 209).

This is fanned out into five forms of publication that were established between 1440 and 1468 during Gutenberg's lifetime:

  • institutional information and communication systems including new educational programs (donations as learning media), rationalization of "office communication" in the church ( book printing as organizational developer , printed letters of indulgence ), standardization of the church liturgy ( liturgica ) and the unification of church rituals and the printed Bibles as the central information store of the Belief ;
  • Mechanization of public communications, starting with the so-called Turks calendar 1454/ 55 , a reminder to the whole Christian , public discussion in Mainzer churches wahlkampf 1461/ 62 , and the pressure of the reform fonts ;
  • Mechanization of private information processing using the example of calendars and Latin manuals ;
  • The mechanization of entertainment art through “image programs” using the example of Albrecht Pfister ; "Enjoyable literature"; and
  • The rebirth of antiquity as software: the scriptographic long-term memory is rewritten ; Interpretation of the humanists as software engineers and overview of the standardization of the classic corpora .

Section 4

The comparatively short section 4 (pp. 329–389) describes the creative exploration of the possibilities of the new medium between the 15th and 16th centuries.

As a first example, he describes a research trip by Bernhard von Breydenbach to the Holy Land between 1483 and 1484, which appeared as a printed and illustrated travelogue; he describes them as "probably the first ethnological descriptions of people [...] that were ever printed" (p. 341). The painter Erhard Reuwich contributed the illustrations .

The second example is the Hortus sanitatis , a presentation of traditional health science in which "art, science and book historians [...] see a departure from medieval traditions, a milestone on the way to the development of modern, descriptive specialist literature" ( P. 342). What is new, however, is that the work “is not identified as the wisdom of auctoritas” , but as a “product of [the] contemplative experience of nature” (p. 345). Giesecke also highlights some of the 376 illustrations of plants and animals, of which around 60 established Hortus' reputation as a “decisive turning point in the history of botanical illustration” (p. 345).

In conclusion, Giesecke introduces “local networks as early forms of the book trade” (p. 366 ff.), By which he means, for example, the sporadic “networking” of printing works (p. 372 ff.), Especially through reprints .

Section 5

The fifth section (pp. 391–497) discusses in detail the “typographical networking of social communication for the common benefit of the German nation” between 1520 and 1555, ie the development of national identity and autonomy as a result of the printing press. In doing so, Giesecke first pointed out the importance of trading networks as a media of typographic communication, describes the development of the structures of the communication system that have survived to the present day and finally describes the development of the standards for printed books that are still valid today in the form of the title page , Pagination and addressing . These standardizations enable the typographical reference system in the form of mutual references through sources and cross-references.

This is followed by statements on the emergence of the appreciation of new content ( novelty as a selection criterion , p. 425 ff.) As well as on interventions by the political system in the information cycle in the form of censorship and data protection - with the latter, Giesecke does not mean the protection of personal data, but rather the emergence of competition and copyright law , for example in the form of privileges for printers and publishers (pp. 445 ff. and 452 ff.). After remarks on censorship and freedom of expression (p. 462 ff.) And preventive censorship (p. 467 ff.), Giesecke finally describes the typographic media as a condition of public opinion (p. 474 f.) And old and new models of controversy and social decision-making (P. 476 ff.).

Finally, Giesecke describes a further standardization process through the development of an artificial language for the typographic communication systems (p. 489 ff.) As a development from the communication community to the language community by awarding the typographical code (p. 493).

Section 6

The sixth and most extensive section (pp. 499–696) describes the typographical production of spirit and culture in the further course of the 16th century . Giesecke focuses on the development of technical literature ( specialist prose ) and books with advisory and relief functions ( books that save physical hardship and money , p. 517 ff.). In detail, he presents a medical guide for the poor ( Armenschatz , see Thesaurus pauperum ) and an instruction book for distilling ( Liber de arte distillandi ).

Giesecke is particularly interested in how the development of letterpress printing has brought about new forms of knowledge and how the understanding of knowledge has been modified within the framework of the typographic system: while in oral and scriptographic cultures the transfer of knowledge was always linked to a personified expert , in the typographic system it is System depersonalized and decoupled from the expert; Medical or technical knowledge was exchanged through face-to-face communication , and through book printing, knowledge was first given directly to the recipient. The lack of a face-to-face situation also made it necessary to develop a new textual form of artificial vision (p. 562 ff.), Which is one of the foundations of scientific description to this day.

He then updates the structure of the typographic information systems already described in the introductory chapters to the state of the 16th century (p. 591 ff.). Here he describes two new feedback loops from the critics ( "the corrections do not damage the author's honor" , p. 595), the emergence of the specialist author and the importance of optical theory for the principles of perspective projection (p. 602 ff.). Abstracting the practical applications of perspective projection, Giesecke develops the differentiation of the criteria of reversibility and truth (p. 614 ff.) And then that of construction and integration (p. 617); Giesecke takes up the train of thought again later in the section on "Transformation of old knowledge as a condition for the renewal of science" (p. 665 ff.).

After his remarks on the emergence of scientific methodology in the 16th century, Giesecke arrives at information transformation through the market , where he describes the constitution of the book as a commodity and its social effects (p. 640 ff.).

In conclusion, Giesecke discusses critical voices about the value of the new information media (p. 682), in which he discovered numerous arguments of today's fears about media effects or the consequences of technology as early as the 15th and 16th centuries.

Section 7

The last section (pp. 697–703) closes with a short concluding remark on the limits of contemporary and the other limits of modern descriptions of typographic networks , where he offers an outlook on possible transfers of his approach to the interpretation of contemporary developments. Limiting, however, he points out with Marshall McLuhan that "every generation that is on the verge of a tremendous change is hypnotized by the power of the new technology" and therefore "unable to foresee the coming developments" .

Summary

Giesecke's main thesis is the radical break between the age of printing and the older media systems of antiquity and the Middle Ages , which are based on orality , i.e. oral transmission, and scriptographic literacy , i.e. handwritten transmission:

“The printing results in a standardization of the texts, their presentation and the rules for their indexing. He removes them from group and institution-bound communication and transforms them into elements of a principally public, virtually everyone-accessible communication. It results in a 'networking' of smaller communication systems in a few decades, which increases the importance of traditional knowledge in writing for social practice. It revolutionizes this knowledge itself, at least in some central areas, by aligning the presentation, far more strongly than before, with clarity and practical feasibility " (J.-D. Müller. In: International Archive for the Social History of German Literature , 18 ( 1993) 1, p. 169).

Giesecke reads the "Intellectual history as information history" (Chapter 6, overview):

“From the information and media theory point of view [...] many changes can be traced back to the emergence of a new type of information, which subsequent generations will call“ objective knowledge ”or“ science ”. This information is a property of a new medium, namely the printed books. In contrast to types of information such as “wisdom” or “artistry”, it is not collected in people's heads from the outset, but in a technical memory that is publicly accessible ” (p. 501).

reception

Giesecke's work was received critically; In his epilogue from 1998 ( “Feedback on Feedback” ) the author mentions around 40 reviews from the mass media , plus numerous other statements and reviews from the web . The wealth of detail and material in the numerous embedded “case studies” was consistently praised, but the systemic-cybernetic approach was controversial.

The reviewer Antonia Lichtenstein sees this approach as a relapse in methods "that have been out of date for about forty years" . In view of the great successes of system theory applications in media studies and the flourishing of current applications of cybernetics in new research areas such as cybernetic anthropology , this criticism seems to be based more on ignorance than on knowledge of the current state of research.

The difficulties of the humanities with the information and communication theory perspective are also evident in the frequently criticized “computer metaphor” : “The author scatters terms such as“ input / output ”or“ software and hardware ”[...] over the text without any relation and suddenly , chic sprinkles, which maybe make a cocktail conversation somehow contemporary, but here do nothing at all in terms of illumination and context. If a print shop [...] is occasionally called an “information processing system”, the reader a “processor”, but also - from suddenly completely different theoretical contexts - an “effector”, then only a terminological confusion arises and not a possibly intended system of terms ” . Giesecke defends his terminology, however, with the argument that his volume was designed as a study of the prehistory of the information society , that the modernist terminology should "facilitate a comparison between the current innovation processes and those in the early modern era" .

Georg Jäger sees in Giesecke's approach an “inadmissible assumption of a meta-point of view” (The theoretical foundation in Giesecke's “Book printing in the early modern times”. In: International Archive for Social History of German Literature , Vol. 18, No. 1, 1993: 179–196 ). Giesecke sees a misunderstanding here and points out again that he actually sees a "structural homology of organic, neural and technical processes" .

Manfred Schneider's comment is quoted on the book cover: “With Giesecke's book, German media studies are finally catching up with international standards” ; Lichtenstein bitingly notes that this is "in order to remain friendly - a lowering of those standards to the level of an eclectic dilettante" .

Supplementary literature

Giesecke completed his investigation around 1600. Anyone who wants to continue media genealogy based on systems theory and discourse analysis has to bridge a span of around two hundred years and can then continue with Friedrich Kittler's writing system (1800/1900), which in turn are well supplemented by gramophone, film, typewriter by the same author.

While Giesecke mainly worked out the achievements of typographic media in book printing in the early modern period , but did not show their limits and their dependence on other communication systems, the author provides this in the follow-up publication From the myths of book culture to the visions of the information society from the year 2002.

For the transition of the Gutenberg galaxy into emerging new forms may also At the end of the Gutenberg galaxy. The new communication conditions by Norbert Bolz (Munich 1993) are worth reading.

expenditure

  • Michael Giesecke : Book Printing in the Early Modern Era. A historical case study of the implementation of new information and communication technologies . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1991. (Hardcover; paperback edition 1998, new edition March 2005.) ISBN 3518289578

See also

literature

  • Michael Giesecke: From the myths of book culture to the visions of the information society . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​2002. ISBN 3-518-29143-2
  • Elizabeth Eisenstein : The Printing Press. Cultural revolutions in early modern Europe . Vienna; New York: Springer, 1997. ISBN 3-211-82848-6 (English original edition 1983)

Web links

Reviews and receptions:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Giesecke: The book printing in the early modern times . Archived from the original on September 27, 2007. Retrieved February 18, 2019.
  2. ↑ a b c d Antonia Lichtenstein: The principle of confusion . In: The Gazette . Kastner AG. April 13, 1999. Retrieved February 18, 2019.